Africa produces less than 1% of its annual vaccine requirement, leaving the continent vulnerable as witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic when the continent struggled to source critical vaccines to save lives.

The pandemic laid bare the urgent need for the continent to accelerate investments in building vaccine development and manufacturing capabilities to ensure the achievement of the bold target of manufacturing 60% of the vaccines we consume in Africa.

Local vaccine manufacturing capacity strengthens national health security and reduces the dependency on foreign suppliers for timely access to critical vaccines, which underscores the importance of a company like Biovac.

Biovac is a bio-pharmaceutical company based in Cape Town that was founded in 2003 in partnership with the South African government to establish local vaccine manufacturing capability for the provision of vaccines for national health management and security.

The DSI has representatives on the Biovac Board and works with key stakeholders advocating for support in building vaccine development and manufacturing capacity at Biovac.

Biovac also works closely with the DSI with regards to linkages with potential funders and product development and technology transfer partners to ensure Biovac’s long-term viability.

“It would be impossible for Biovac to achieve its mission/goals without support from the DSI and other partners as the timelines are long, the undertaking is complex and requires huge capital investments and it’s not a mission that one can take on one’s own,” explains Biovac Head of Science and Innovation, Ebrahim Mohamed.

Through critical investment in local infrastructure building and the development of vaccine development and manufacturing skills, the company has secured high-profile technology transfers from international pharmaceutical companies for the manufacturing of paediatric vaccines. These partnerships have enabled Biovac to be a frontrunner in establishing the South African vaccine industry, through local infrastructure building, the transfer of sophisticated technology and the building of scarce aseptic manufacturing skills.

Explains Mohamed: “Furthermore, beyond manufacturing capability, Biovac has also built globally recognised capabilities in vaccine product development, a unique capability in Africa. We are currently working on the development of an oral cholera vaccine to address a growing need in South Africa and on the continent. Another key innovation has been the development of a group B strep vaccine which targets a maternal immunisation strategy, whereby an expecting-mom is vaccinated and transfers natural protection to the baby before birth. We are also working together with Afrigen/MPP/WHO as part of a consortium to establish mRNA capacity and capability for lower middle-income settings around the world.”

Mohamed’s role is multifactorial, but at its core is developing a team with know-how and skills to address the complex technologies of tomorrow.

“A huge component of this is the development of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), which quite often in the context of Africa, needs to be imported through partnerships with multinationals. The ability, however, to produce the drug substance (API) locally is one of the key aspects to the role as well as expanding the ability to produce vaccines off different technology platforms (e.g., bacterial or viral platforms). To do this, we have developed the ability at Biovac to develop certain drug substance candidates in-house and to date we have worked on a variety of different targets such as HiB, Pneumococcal, TB, HIV and of late GBS and OCV vaccine targets.”

Asked how ready the continent is to deal with the next pandemic, Mohamed is cautiously optimistic: “While we are certainly more prepared to deal with the next infectious disease emergency than we were three years ago, we still have a distance to go. Encouragingly, we have in excess of 20 initiatives across Africa to build vaccine manufacturing capacity, but these need to be expedited to be better prepared sooner. Underpinning the need to be ready in pandemic situations is the ability to be able to build a sustainable organisation able to supply the demand of local EPI vaccines.

“However, we need to increase investments across the science and innovation value chain with longer time horizons, incentivise product development and technology transfer partnerships while also identifying strategic national vaccine product development and/or manufacturing projects and facilitate access to funding for these,” he adds.